Parker achieved things that were, by any measure, exceptional.

He was the first Native American to hold the rank of general in the United States Army.

He wrote the formal surrender terms at Appomattox.

He was the first Native American Commissioner of Indian Affairs.

These were not small achievements.

They required exceptional ability, exceptional persistence, and exceptional navigation of systems that were actively, legally, designed to exclude him.

And yet the structures that had produced the need for that exceptional navigation remained in place after he achieved each of these things.

The legal citizenship barrier that had blocked his bar admission was not dismantled by his achievements — it was set aside for him specifically, through exceptional arrangements, while remaining in place for others.